As mentioned in this section, fraud relates to any unfair activity that harms a third party (artist, composer, producer), as well as a DSP, or even your business and Sepulchral Silence's. When fraud occurs, it is not only a loss to your business or the artist, but to all other artists and copyright holders, as the royalty pool of the DSPs ends up being reduced. On the other hand, it damages our reputation and our contracts with DSPs — and consequently your business.
As a Sepulchral Silence partner, it is important to identify and prevent any fraudulent use of your platform. In order to do it, please check and follow the advice given in this article. Moreover, you can find further information regarding what is considered fraud in this article.
Check and review releases from the QC queue
By going to Distribution > QC you can review the list of releases in your platform that are pending to be reviewed by our QC team. We recommend you check this section daily and have a look at the content your users are trying to distribute. If you find any suspicious releases, we recommend you remove them from the QC queue by following these steps:
- Click on the release name. This will take you to the release page.
- Go to the 5. History tab.
- On the top part of this tab, click on "Remove all pending deliveries". This will remove the release from the queue QC, avoiding our team from opening a ticket to you.
Check the users' profiles and their behavior
In order to look for suspicious activities, you can check the profiles of the users that are trying to distribute releases for the following traits:
- Empty, incomplete, or fake end-user profile information.
- Auto-generated and/or generic emails (example: tom123456@gmail.com).
- Users connecting from multiple IP locations (using VPNs). You can check this from the "Activity" tab in the user's profile.
- Multiple users that share the same Paypal account or email.
- Strikes.
If you find enough information leading you to think that the user is in fact trying to comment fraud, you can proceed to deactivate an account.
Check the users' catalogs
There are some signals that can help you locate fake artists and/or releases that may lead to fraudulent activity. Please, pay special attention to:
- Generic titles in songs and albums.
- Albums with the same length in all the songs.
- Albums that contain very different styles and artists depending on the track (missing consistency on the release).
- One-track singles with less than 30 seconds of length or albums with very short songs.
- Inconsistency between the streams generated and the number of followers in the DSP's artist profile
- The irregular ratio of monthly listeners vs. total streams in the channels (i.e.: 5 monthly listeners = 12K streams in each song).
- On the other hand, extremely regular listening patterns along with a release (i.e.: 12K streams in each song even if there are 8 songs in a release) and song lengths (1:26, 1:30, 1:29, 1:40, etc.).
Avoid the use of promotional services that promise a boost in streaming numbers
It can happen that an artist ends up involved in streaming fraud after purchasing a shady marketing service. If you are planning on hiring a promotional campaign, we recommend you to research thoroughly and work only with reputable companies. Many of these companies use bots to boost streaming numbers, consequently involving the artist in fraud. As this violates DSPs' as well as SonoSuite's Terms & Conditions, it can result in your music being removed from the channels. Please, avoid any service that claims to offer a guaranteed placement on playlists in exchange for money.
If you are interested in boosting your artist's streaming numbers, you can check Spotify's blog for a guide on how to gain an authentic following through Spotify’s tools and resources.